Burn it Down
by marnthemiz
Summary: Reese Bridges, 21, Classified as Insane, goes by the name 'Red' and has an obsession with both the colour and fire, which also can be seen as red. But what happens when Joker takes over the Asylum? Will she be the hero and assist Batman for a fight for her freedom? Or will she take out her insanity that she built up on innocent people? oc x ?
1. Chapter 1

**Chapter One: Several Encounters**

Several hums sounded in the silence of the cell. The hums belonged to a, what would seem, innocent girl, who lay in depths of despair on the concrete ground of her cell, head resting neatly on her forearms. Who would realise the madhouse would be so.. _boring. _Usually, this was the time of day she'd try and flirt her way out of the cell or try and tease the guards standing around her cell. But today? They weren't even there. It would be fairly easy to escape, apart from the great big electric fence surrounding her. Hm. What to do, what to do.

_Zap._

The glistening blue of the metal around her shut off, becoming a dull grey. Her eyes snapped open. They never turned off the electricity, not even to give her recorded patient interviews. She jumped up from her spot, her mind reeling as she ran to the door, overcome with dizziness. _It must be a trap. _"Who's there?" Footsteps sounded from all around her, but she couldn't see a figure.

_Slam!_

A figure dropped onto the meshy ceiling of the cell, the way he was crouching reminded her of a spider. A huge, red painted smile shone down on her, and out of surprise, she fell back onto the floor.

"Coo-wey! You know if you're ever in a scary movie, toots, you should never say 'who's there?', it's a death trap."

"Joker." She snarled angrily.

"Ah, she knows my name, must be a lucky day for me." He made his way down the side of the cell. His eyes were lingering on me. "Prettier than the goons mentioned."

"What do you want?" The girl turned her back to the Joker, folding her arms and shielding herself away from his creepy, leering eyes. Joker chuckled. She reminded him of a little child in a strop. Joker skipped around the round the cell, attempting to attract her attention as he spoke.

"I've been told a lot about you, little _Reese Bridges._" He emphasised her name, making her wince. "_Red_."

"How do you know my name?" She growled.

"That's unimportant, classified information. It seems that you have a little admirer here at Arkham." He laughed. His hands were linked through the cell, clutching onto it as he peered through the mesh. Red's cheeks flamed up. "Now I see why they call you Red." She leapt at the mesh, which Joker had unlinked himself from and cowered back. "Zeesh. Anger. Not good."

"What do you want, clown?" She asked, almost pouting.

"I need a favour."

"Why should I do anything for you?" She raised her eyebrow, before adding, "and why me?"

"You're the girl with the fire obsession, right?" He grinned, one might call a Devil's smile. She shivered.

"I don't do that shit anymore, Joker. I've changed." He reached into his pocket, before revealing a box of matches. He pulled out a single match and lit it.

"Are you sure?" He asked evilly. He held the flame at arms length from him, and Red's eyes followed it, mesmerised, as if she was in a trance. Her inner pyro was burning up, literally, if only she could touch it.. So.. Pretty.

Joker blew a little air on the match and it burnt out. "I didn't think so." Red snapped back to reality.

"So.. What do I get in return, if I help you?" She wondered aloud, as she began to pace up the cell.

And in a hoarse voice, he answered, "Your **freedom**."

* * *

Red began running. She **had **agreed to the Joker's proposition, and she hated going back on her word, but she didn't want any part of this. It had literally been minutes since the agreement and she had already been spotted, sprinting down the halls, by none other than Edward Nigma on the secret cameras he'd scattered all about the Asylum. Which he then passed the message onto Joker, but there was no turning back now, no matter what. If Joker caught her, he'd hand her over to Zsasz, or worse, Killer Croc.

_Ding da ding dong._ **_"Joker here. Find the girl. If she escapes, she'll ruin EVERYTHING! Also, any news on the Bat's whereabouts?"_**

Shit. The whole of Arkham Asylum was now searching for her.

Oop, shit, Zsasz. She hid behind the corner of the wall, and after a few seconds she peered round, to check on his whereabouts. Other than the homicidal murmuring to himself, he was placing a recently deceased guard with a slit throat in a realistic posture. She raised her eyebrow.

"..Let's put.. you.. Here." He said, lifting an arm and placing it on the keyboard on the desk, as if he were typing. With a second to spare, Red crept past him to the other corner of a wall. "Eh?" He said aloud, his eyes pricking up. He span around and scanned the room with those crazed eyes. Thinking he must be hearing things, he went back to his masterpiece. Red let out a sigh of relief and opened the unlocked door to one of the Doctors offices, maybe she'd find some sort of help there, a phone maybe? But instead, she found an older man sitting at his desk, a pen lightly touching the plain piece of paper.

"Excuse me? Doctor?" She said quietly, loud enough for him to hear, but not too loud to startle him. He was unresponsive, so Red walked closer to the desk, a lantern flickering. The paper he was writing on was filled with large lettering, written in red. _We're all a little insane. _"Sir?" She tried again, touching the chair lightly, which in return span around quickly. The body of a man was left posed, his eyes were rolled back into his head, his mouth gaping open, and a hole in his chest where his heart had been ripped out and thrown on the desk.

She was about to let out a blood-curdling scream, before a hand clamped over her mouth. "Shh- We wouldn't want to attract our dear Victor Zsasz, now would we?" He said softly, breathing in her scent. "Now tell me, what you're really afraid of?" His hand tightly placed over her mouth, he rolled her head to the left and gently pierced her neck with his needled glove. She let out a small gasp before he dropped her to the ground. _Ooh Joker was going to be happy with this._

"And at the end of fear,** oblivion.**"

**A.N: Soo.. My first chapter! What do you think? More importantly, what do you think of Red? Is she.. cliche? Or anything? Do you like her? **

**So many questions I want to ask you all, AH. So if you've read this, please Review, cos you're all amazing.**

**So next chapter: A nightmare, Harley Quinn and a change of clothes.**


	2. Chapter 2:

A.N: Chapter two yay! Time for the nightmare, where fears are revealed! But what's this, pity? Find out.

**Oh and you should listen to ****The Dead Silence Theme song (what a good movie by the way, mwahaha) but yeah, it's creepy and if you have it on kind of quietly in the background I feel it fits in with the nightmare, sort of. Especially the first bit.**

**Enjoy!**

Chapter Two: Only just a dream?

"_And at the end of fear, __**oblivion**__." Were Jonathan Crane's final words to her before she blacked out. He must have injected her with a lot of that shit. When her eyes flickered open she was curled up in a ball, differently dressed from the old stained orange jump-suit she was usually in. She was wearing a grey long-sleeved, old-fashioned dress, with a white pinafore, matching white socks and black shoes. Her blonde hair tumbled over her shoulders, the two bits at the front clipped at the back, out of her face. Her fingernails were covered in dirt._

_And she was frightened, the most frightened she'd ever been, and she was hardly ever frightened. She looked at her surroundings. Nothing. Just woods and trees for miles. She felt a small sensation moving on her skin and looked down. Hundreds, thousands of spiders were crawling over her hands and body._

"_Ahh, get off!" She screamed at them, jumping up from the mud. She turned to run away but ended up tripping a large log and face-planting the floor._

"_Found you!" Scarecrow whispered into her ear, she turned to look up at the monster but instead covered her eyes with her dirty hands, and he disappeared. He's only a figure of her imagination, she can control this! _

_She dared herself to look again, and slowly pulled her hands away from her eyes, peering through one eye. This time she was in a familiar train station, no people were there, just one lonely woman, standing and waiting for a train._

"_M-Mom?" Red called, in a voice she hadn't heard since she was little._

"_Hurry up Reesey, we'll miss the train home." She held out her arm to help the little girl up and the girl pulled herself up, wrapping her arms around her waist. "What's that for, sweetie?"_

_"N-Nothing." She answered innocently. She'd seen it all before. This train station. She counted to three._

_1_

_2_

_3_

_"Look what you've done to your dress!" Her mother exclaimed, just how she predicted. And at that precise second, two teenage boys strolled casually through the door, hands deep into their jean pockets._

_"Yeah, mum, I- I fell." Reese swallowed hard, her heart in her mouth. Her eyes followed the boys every move as they skulked up the walkway, deep in whispered conversations._

_"Well, we'll have to ask daddy to get you a new one, wont we?" She answered, a fond smile on her face as she looked down at the girl, but it soon disappeared when she traced Reese's eyesight and peered over at the teenagers. She reassuringly squeezed her daughters hand tighter, for the two boys were about 3 feet away, maybe a little too close for comfort. She could hear a distant train approaching, and so did the boys, for they walked straight up to her as the older one pulled out a gun from his back pocket._

_"Hand over your purse, lady," he growled, holding the gun up to her temple. Before she could answer, the youngest grabbed the purse from her hands and began to scavenge through it, throwing loose bits of paper and receipts to the ground as he went. Loose change scattered along the floor, before he reached the bottom of her bag and finding the wallet full of her notes and 2 or 3 cards, which he happily stuffed into his pocket. He threw the bag to the ground before uttering, "and the pearls, gimme those damn pearls! Make it quick." She reluctantly obeyed, Reese clutched onto her mothers waist as the woman undid her chain at the back and sadly handed over the prized piece of jewellery. The man with the gun stared at Reese a good long while, and Reese stared back, fear and panic swirling around in her grey orbs. Once they'd finished, he removed the gun from her left temple and got on the newly arrived train._

_Reese breathed a sigh of relief, it was over. Done. Her mother gave her a reassuring squeeze. The older guy, the one with the gun, gave the two a strange look, and repeatedly pressed the 'Open door' button on the side. Reese's mom's head shot up and saw the gun being pointed at her from the doorway. She quickly shoved Reese to the ground and BANG!_

Jonathan Crane usually found enjoyment out of the echoing screams of fear that swallowed the Asylum, night after night. But today? Nothing. He felt nothing at all. And he seeing the brutal murder of the poor girls innocent mother, he felt something different. Was he wallowing in pity? Guilt? **Sympathy? **

Who was this man? Certainly not Jonathan Crane. So, to avoid feeling any more sorry for her than he already did, he jumped out of her nightmares. Somehow, he couldn't bare to see any more.

He took one of her ghostly pale hands and began to drag her limp body out of the room and down the hall. You'd be pleased to know that Mr Zsasz was nowhere in sight, so maybe he'd gone off to find more victims. Her body was heavy in his arms, limp, almost lifeless. Crane gave up with the dragging, and instead, scooped her up into his arms, for this was much easier to transport her from one place to the next. Her eyes were shut, her mouth too, and she hadn't even made a sound since the dreams had started.

"M-Mom." She murmured, twisting and turning in her sleep, so much so that Crane struggled and nearly dropped her on the ground, before she stopped again. Silence. He began to start walking again, he was sure it was this way to Joker's lair.

_**Ding da ding dong! "Any sign of the girl, goons? No? SHE'S ONE GIRL AND YOU CAN'T EVEN FIND HER? PATHETIC. ALL OF YOU. NO WONDER BATS KEEPS BEATING YOU ALL!"**_

Scarecrow's footsteps thudded up the stairs before Red began to twitch again. "Why cant it be over and done? I don't have a serum for that. I'm sorry, Little Red." He muttered. A few more echoes of silence before,

"AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!" Red let out the most blood-curdling, ear-destroying scream you could ever hear. It went on for what seemed like an eternity, and it made Scarecrow wince with sorrow. He actually felt sorry for the girl.

"Sh-sh-sh." He told her soothingly, not that she could hear him or anything. The last thing he needed was drawing Zsasz's attention.

"Ah, what.. what do we have.. here?" Zsasz appeared out of nowhere, twisting his treasured blade around in his fingers as he leant up against the door frame. _Well done, Jonathan, spoke too soon._ "A..nother Zombie to be.. set free?"

"No, Zsasz. I'm taking her to Joker, he needs her." Crane answered darkly. "Out of my way."

"Pity, really. What an.. honor it would be to.. Liberate such a pretty face." Zsasz edged closer, he was literally, dangerous close to the mark. All it took was one slice of her throat.

"Zsasz." Crane warned. And as if on cue, Red's eyes fluttered open and she was being held between to dangerous serial killers, and that wasn't where anyone wanted to be. She rolled out of Jonathan's arms, pushed Zsasz out of her way and sprinted off down the hall, the clattering of her shoes echoed around the asylum. She ran for a few minutes until she thought her heart and lungs were about to explode. She promised herself she wouldn't cry. But here she was, running for her life

That's when she saw it. A huge great, green question mark at the dead end graffitied on a huge door. She rubbed a finger across it. Huh. Dry. It seemed as if someone, that someone being the Riddler, had made a flying visit. Unless, he was inside? She listened, she heard nothing but the yells of Zsasz and Crane as they chased up the hall after her. Shit. She was running out of time, she needed to make a quick decision. If she stayed out in the open, she was most definitely fucked, whereas if she was to go inside, they'd follow her anyway. But it was a big, heavy door with what looked like, many locks she could lock herself in with if she were to go inside. And the decision was made. She opened the door as fast as she could, before carefully closing it behind her.

"Ahh. I wonder when you'd show up, Toots."

Shit. Out of any room in the whole of Arkham Asylum, she'd had to have picked that one.

**AN: AHH! I'm sorry! I honestly thought there'd be some Harley in this one, but definitely the next. Oh and if you want to see what Reese looks like, type in Amber Heard in The Ward. So yeah. I think that's it. Thanks. R&R Love you all!**


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